The Lamp Post: Noah Edition

As I wrote in my review of the film, you should make an informed, personal decision about seeing Noah (just like any other film).

To help in that, here are some interviews with Darren Aronofsky, information about the film, as well as several takes, both positive and negative.

Information

Atlantic interview: “For me, there’s a big discussion about dominion and stewardship. There’s this contradiction [between the two], some would say, in the Bible, but it doesn’t have to be a contradiction. It can work together.”

Christianity Today interview: “In all the midrash tradition, the text is what the text is. The text exists and is truth and the word and the final authority. But how you decide to interpret it, you can open up your imagination to be inspired by it.”

RNS interview: “We started to realize these big ideas about justice and mercy in the film. It started with Noah being called righteous in his generation, and we tried to figure out what that meant.”

Negative

Brian Godawa: “The Noah movie is ugly. It’s anti-human exceptionalism. It’s enviro-agitprop. And it’s poorly done. I can’t recommend this movie, not just because of it’s godawful theology (or should I say “earthology”), but because it’s godawful filmmaking.”

Barbara Nicolosi: “Noah is a terrible, terrible movie. As a story, it doesn’t attain to the level of the worst of the cheesy Biblical movies made in the fifties.”

Menachem Wecker: “There are certainly some well-composed components to the film, but my hunch is that most people who want to see a good movie that advocates a deep love of nature will do better to watch Princess Monoke instead.”

Todd Starnes: “My beef is with Christian leaders trying to guilt trip us into going to see the film. It’s as if we have some sort of moral obligation to throw our good money at a movie that makes a mockery of the Bible.”

Positive

Greg Thornbury: “I have always had my students study Aronofksy, and I believe that this film, which he has said he wanted to be among his first, is a worthy addition to the body of his work.”

Alissa Wilkinson: “It does what good art should do: it forces us to “re-see” a story anew, to once again sit on the edge of our seats and wonder what will happen next.”

Ben Witherington: “I like this film in many ways, and will go back and watch it several more times. It is a welcome relief to the superficial portrayals in Son of God and other similar films by non-risk taking film makers, especially Christian ones.”

Phil Cooke: “In this version, the filmmakers made Noah a complex character, and helped me see possibilities I’d never considered for how details in the story could have happened.”